Moore: EA will lead online charge

EA Sports captain Peter Moore believes that within five years we will all be playing games online, maybe with robotic dogs and hoverboards.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at E3, Moore warned that if the industry does not embrace the change it may end up like the next music industry.

"You're talking to a company here that truly believes that every consumer will ultimately go online, whether it's five years from now. You're talking to a company that ultimately believes that physical media goes away, that how we get our media - whether it's games, we're already doing it through music, or if it's TV shows - it's going to go through Internet Protocols more than it is through cable or satellite," said Moore.

"Whatever you want to think about the future, there's no doubt that the Internet and connected experiences will be a bigger part of our lives than they ever have been. I'm always fond of saying that we'll tell our grandchildren that we drove to the store to buy a physical disc.

"In tomorrow's world we'll have half a terabyte of storage at home, everything will be in there, and we as an industry need to make sure we don't become another music industry," he added.

Moore believes games without some kind of online interaction are now seen as "primitive" and that EA will "lead the charge" into our digital future.

One of the ways EA will do that is through Nucleus, its social games service that tracks preferences, scores and relationships so you can set challenges for friends across numerous games on different formats.

Nucleus will be implemented into EA Sports games plus Battlefield Heroes and Spore, and aims to feature in around 25 titles by the end of 2009.

Pop over to GamesIndustry.biz for the full interview with Peter Moore, where he talks about redesigning sports for Wii and making online multiplayer less "intimidating".